On 24 Aug. 2021, China’s Supreme People's Court (SPC) published the “Evaluation Report on Effects of Building Intelligent Courts to Promote Green Development (hereinafter “the Report”, 建設智慧法院促進綠色發展成效評估報告), introducing achievements made by intelligent courts in reducing people's litigation fatigue, improving work quality and efficiency, and promoting green development.
According to the Report, intelligent courts have greatly facilitated case filing and reduced travel costs through the implementation of electronic litigation. In terms of online case filing (E-filing), the courts at all levels nationwide accepted the online filing of 10.8 million cases in 2020, accounting for 54% of the first-instance cases. Over 20% of applications for case filing were submitted during non-working hours, and about 10% of applications for case filing were submitted on non-working days.
According to the actual application effects of users, under ideal conditions, a party concerned can complete the application for case filing through the online litigation service platform in 20 minutes.
Compared with the traditional way of on-site case filing by offline courts, courts at all levels nationwide could help the parties, lawyers and other litigation participants reduce travel by 2.45 billion kilometers and save travel costs by about CNY 1.59 billion in 2020, equivalent to saving 80 thousand tons of standard coal and reducing carbon emissions by 163 thousand tons.
Cover Photo by Jessica Holmes (https://unsplash.com/@iameow) on Unsplash
Contributors: CJO Staff Contributors Team
